3 ways to drive leads on LinkedIn

I like to envision that if the major social networks had high school personas, Facebook would be the popular jock, Twitter the gossip queen, and LinkedIn the straight-edged nerd. At first glance you might overlook the seemingly boring professional network, but to do so may cost your business several great benefits.

If you aren’t already, it’s time to get acquainted with this growing platform. According to a HubSpot study of over 5,000 businesses, LinkedIn was 277% more effective for lead generation than the other top social networks, Facebook and Twitter.

Here are 3 ways you can drive leads through LinkedIn.

1. Network.

With over 200 million users, LinkedIn makes it easy to reconnect with classmates, colleagues and more. Upon creating your account you will notice that LinkedIn offers suggestions of people from your professional industry and university network to connect with. By adding connections, you will find your network growing exponentially. Aim for at least 500 connections as a general rule of thumb. Don’t know 500 people? That’s okay. Conduct a LinkedIn search for groups related to your university, a company, a skill or profession, and you’ll find new and useful prospects to connect with.

2. Market.

Put your message in front of the right people. People join LinkedIn to showcase their career and work expertise, or to find content and information to make their professional lives better. So businesses targeting other businesses will naturally find a higher concentration of their target market on LinkedIn. Whether it’s including testimonials on your page from colleagues or clients or posting content such as webinar invites or promotions, you want to exude expertise and competence. Since there is already less ‘clutter’ on LinkedIn than you would find on a congested Facebook feed, your marketing-related content has a higher chance of getting noticed.

3. SEO your profile.

Yes, just like you would optimize your business website, you can also optimize your LinkedIn profile to give it that extra push in search engines. Say for example, you’d like to show up in a prospect’s search results under ‘life insurance agent.’ Simply include those keywords several times in your profile, in every possible field. With so many incomplete and inactive profiles, LinkedIn favors those profiles with more connections and activity. You also want to belong to groups related to ‘life insurance.’ Increase your relevancy by connecting with as many people as you can in the fields related to yours.

As it turns out, there is a lot more going on over at LinkedIn then we may have first thought. These tips will allow you to better utilize the networking site to reach leads, customers, investors, partners, sponsors and more.